Obama has been hanging out with Bill and Melinda Gates , and other persons who really care about education. Their consensus seems to be that all those people who said that a high student-to-teacher ratio was harmful were wrong, and that we can really think about getting rid of a lot of those teachers and replacing them with on-line instruction. With increasing emphasis on drill-and-grill and other regressive educational techniques, does this not put Wikipedia in more significant role as an educational [ahem] resource?

Obama has been hanging out with Bill and Melinda Gates , and other persons who really care about education. Their consensus seems to be that all those people who said that a high student-to-teacher ratio was harmful were wrong, and that we can really think about getting rid of a lot of those teachers and replacing them with on-line instruction. With increasing emphasis on drill-and-grill and other regressive educational techniques, does this not put Wikipedia in more significant role as an educational [ahem] resource?

I think this is just one more component of the Corporate Totalitarian Agenda, replacing everything that we have been accustomed to regard as the Public Sector with the Non-Representational Government of Privateerism.

I think a lot of people are being suckered into it out of sheer naivete, but the corporate con artists know perfectly well what they want and how they plan to get it.

Obama has been hanging out with Bill and Melinda Gates , and other persons who really care about education. Their consensus seems to be that all those people who said that a high student-to-teacher ratio was harmful were wrong, and that we can really think about getting rid of a lot of those teachers and replacing them with on-line instruction. With increasing emphasis on drill-and-grill and other regressive educational techniques, does this not put Wikipedia in more significant role as an educational [ahem] resource?

I think that this is just one more component of the Corporate Totalitarian Agenda, replacing absolutely everything that we have been accustomed to regard as the Public Sector with the Non-Representative Government of Privateerism.

I think a lot of people are being suckered into it out of sheer naivete, but the corporate con artists know perfectly well what they want and how they plan to get it.

Jon Awbrey

See, I take a longer view of education, and note that public education as we know it in American K-12, is a relatively recent thing, dating from only about 1850. It comes (basically) from a Prussian idea that if you take kids away from their parents and homeschool-education soon enough, you can turn them into little ready-to-obey-orders-of-the-state brainwashed Hitler Youth. Again, this idea in turn came from late 18th and early 19th century Prussia, long before there was a Hitler Youth. In fact the Hitler Youth itself was just carrying on a fine Prussian tradition that was more than a century old, by then. And which, by that time, had been spread into the school systems of Amerika by people like Horace Mann, who transplanted it into Massachusetts just in the mid-19th century, after which it spread in the US like kudzu.

Wilhelm von Humboldt and his ilk, a couple of generations earlier in Europe, weren't educating Prussian youth in the early 1800's via compulsory state schools because they wanted to turn them into little philosophers. They were educating them, compulsorily, by the state, because Prussia had had its ass kicked by Napoleon and decided it was because the children who came from home-schooling weren't robotical enough to make moldable soldiers.

So when I see you taking about "drill-and-grill" techniques as being part of Bill/Melinda Gatesian "Corporate Totalitarian Agenda" it makes me laugh so hard it brings tears to my eyes. Drill and grill isn't the corporate totalitarian agenda. It's the ultimate statist brainwashing agenda, and for 150 to 200 years in first Europe and then the US, it's worked so well that you seem not to be aware of it. You think it's sort of the way of nature, with the new business model trying to undo the way things have always been.

Obama has been hanging out with Bill and Melinda Gates , and other persons who really care about education. Their consensus seems to be that all those people who said that a high student-to-teacher ratio was harmful were wrong, and that we can really think about getting rid of a lot of those teachers and replacing them with on-line instruction. With increasing emphasis on drill-and-grill and other regressive educational techniques, does this not put Wikipedia in more significant role as an educational [ahem] resource?

See, I take a longer view of education, and note that public education as we know it in American K-12, is a relatively recent thing, dating from only about 1850. It comes (basically) from a Prussian idea ...

Is this comment about Prussian education factual and true? Where do other influence such as British/Greek/Roman models come in and compare?

(Or were they previously only ever aimed at elites and the rest of the population apprenticed to whatever trade or activity their parents were involved in?).

See, I take a longer view of education, and note that public education as we know it in American K-12, is a relatively recent thing, dating from only about 1850. It comes (basically) from a Prussian idea …

Is this comment about Prussian education factual and true? Where do other influence such as British/Greek/Roman models come in and compare?

(Or were they previously only ever aimed at elites and the rest of the population apprenticed to whatever trade or activity their parents were involved in?).

There are a few papers here for those of you who want to get up to speed on these issues.

See, I take a longer view of education, and note that public education as we know it in American K-12, is a relatively recent thing, dating from only about 1850. It comes (basically) from a Prussian idea ...

Is this comment about Prussian education factual and true?

The fragment you quote is pretty factual and true. However...

QUOTE(Milton Roe @ Tue 8th March 2011, 12:54am)

Wilhelm von Humboldt and his ilk, a couple of generations earlier in Europe, weren't educating Prussian youth in the early 1800's via compulsory state schools because they wanted to turn them into little philosophers. They were educating them, compulsorily, by the state, because Prussia had had its ass kicked by Napoleon and decided it was because the children who came from home-schooling weren't robotical enough to make moldable soldiers.

Milt, this is one of the biggest howlers you have ever enunciated on this board. The fact of the matter is that Wilhelm von Humboldt and "his ilk" transformed education specifically to encourage independent thought; they taught kids to read and write classical Greek, to compose classical music, and to master geometry. This is hardly what you do if you want "robotic" kids. But that's not the only thing you have wrong here. The Prussian military theorists developed "Auftragstaktik," which was indeed a response to getting their asses kicked by Napoleon. But Auftragstaktik is based on giving independent combat units a great deal of independence and trusting them to improvise tactics in the context of an understanding of the larger mission. It requires well-educated and creative soldiers who have confidence in their own powers of judgement. There is no room there for robots.

But Auftragstaktik is based on giving independent combat units a great deal of independence and trusting them to improvise tactics in the context of an understanding of the larger mission. It requires well-educated and creative soldiers who have confidence in their own powers of judgement. There is no room there for robots.

Indeed. One of the largest conflicts between the Wehrmacht and Hitler's special forces is that the special forces emphasized unthinking loyalty and obedience, while the Wehrmacht had long trained its officers and even NCOs for independent, on-the-spot decision making capability. Germans are not all of a piece, you know.

The Humboldt education reforms provide a useful contrast to the present-day drive to computerize education. Humboldt set about to make the student conscious of how his mind works, so that he might learn creativity. For example, the practice of teaching multiple foreign languages, including classical languages, has the effect of making language a conscious process, whereas one speaks one's native language automatically without having to consider how it works. The workings of the mind are highly interdependent with the operations of language. By the same token, teaching classical music composition means teaching a different sort of language; instead of having specific referents in the world, music expresses ideas which are inherently ambiguous and convey meaning through change. Considering how to compose a piece using this method also causes the student to reflect upon the power of his mind to perform non-logical and non-arbitrary, i.e. creative operations.

Compare this to the brave new world of Obama & Bill and Melinda Gates. They are basically thinking of kids as little portable hard drives that can be filled with data (actually, this is remarkably like the epistemology of L. Ron Hubbard.) Little hard drives do not create anything new; they simply retrieve data. This is guaranteed to achieve "robotic" results.

The Humboldt education reforms provide a useful contrast to the present-day drive to computerize education. Humboldt set about to make the student conscious of how his mind works, so that he might learn creativity. For example, the practice of teaching multiple foreign languages, including classical languages, has the effect of making language a conscious process, whereas one speaks one's native language automatically without having to consider how it works. The workings of the mind are highly interdependent with the operations of language. By the same token, teaching classical music composition means teaching a different sort of language; instead of having specific referents in the world, music expresses ideas which are inherently ambiguous and convey meaning through change. Considering how to compose a piece using this method also causes the student to reflect upon the power of his mind to perform non-logical and non-arbitrary, i.e. creative operations.

Compare this to the brave new world of Obama & Bill and Melinda Gates. They are basically thinking of kids as little portable hard drives that can be filled with data (actually, this is remarkably like the epistemology of L. Ron Hubbard.) Little hard drives do not create anything new; they simply retrieve data. This is guaranteed to achieve "robotic" results.

Back up. The Gates Foundation spent $3 billion in 2009, but most of it outside the US. Most of the education money was spent in the US, indeed-- about half a billion. But that was only 1/6th of it. The Foundation funds education in the US (a relatively small fraction of its funds), but not health in the US. It funds health care (emphasis on vaccines and prevention) in the third world, but not much there on education.

Most of the Foundation's money (out of the total) goes for health issues, not education. Gates' comment on education in Africa is that it's pointless to try to spend money on any kind of education for a child that has TB, HIV, or is protein and vitamin malnurished, and anemic due to malaria and a gut full of worms (causing iron deficiency). His hypothesis is that if you fix or prevent those problems, children will think better, no matter what education they get elsewhere. I think this quite a reasonable idea.

The Humboldt education reforms provide a useful contrast to the present-day drive to computerize education. Humboldt set about to make the student conscious of how his mind works, so that he might learn creativity. For example, the practice of teaching multiple foreign languages, including classical languages, has the effect of making language a conscious process, whereas one speaks one's native language automatically without having to consider how it works. The workings of the mind are highly interdependent with the operations of language. By the same token, teaching classical music composition means teaching a different sort of language; instead of having specific referents in the world, music expresses ideas which are inherently ambiguous and convey meaning through change. Considering how to compose a piece using this method also causes the student to reflect upon the power of his mind to perform non-logical and non-arbitrary, i.e. creative operations.

Compare this to the brave new world of Obama & Bill and Melinda Gates. They are basically thinking of kids as little portable hard drives that can be filled with data (actually, this is remarkably like the epistemology of L. Ron Hubbard.) Little hard drives do not create anything new; they simply retrieve data. This is guaranteed to achieve “robotic” results.

People who have troubled themselves to click on any of the links in my Web Vita, or follow any of the numerous references that I passed under their collective noses for the past five years, will know that I have been following and even contributing a little to the literature on IT in education and research since the early 1990s, at least.

There is nothing about the use of technology in education and research that says we have to treat human beings like machines. The sources of that inhumanity issue from the aims and the brains of some people, not from the nature of the machines we use.

First of all, better late than never: Mod's note: I moved the predictable off-topic fracas to the usual location. There.

Now, regarding the use of computers: I ain't agin 'em. They can handily replace the movie projector, the overhead projector, the slide projector, and the pocket calculator, and they can supplement the trip to the school library. They cannot, however, replace the teacher, no matter how appealing that prospect may seem to the accountants.

The Humboldt education reforms provide a useful contrast to the present-day drive to computerize education. Humboldt set about to make the student conscious of how his mind works, so that he might learn creativity. For example, the practice of teaching multiple foreign languages, including classical languages, has the effect of making language a conscious process, whereas one speaks one's native language automatically without having to consider how it works. The workings of the mind are highly interdependent with the operations of language. By the same token, teaching classical music composition means teaching a different sort of language; instead of having specific referents in the world, music expresses ideas which are inherently ambiguous and convey meaning through change. Considering how to compose a piece using this method also causes the student to reflect upon the power of his mind to perform non-logical and non-arbitrary, i.e. creative operations.

Compare this to the brave new world of Obama & Bill and Melinda Gates. They are basically thinking of kids as little portable hard drives that can be filled with data (actually, this is remarkably like the epistemology of L. Ron Hubbard.) Little hard drives do not create anything new; they simply retrieve data. This is guaranteed to achieve “robotic” results.

People who have troubled themselves to click on any of the links in my Web Vita, or follow any of the numerous references that I passed under their collective noses for the past five years, will know that I have been following and even contributing a little to the literature on IT in education and research since the early 1990s, at least.

There is nothing about the use of technology in education and research that says we have to treat human beings like machines. The sources of that inhumanity issue from the aims and the brains of some people, not from the nature of the machines we use.

What sorts of aims and brains?

Aye, there's the rub …

Jon Awbrey

Say, Jon. Pray give us a synopsis, yea, verily, even an abstract of your concrete views on this subject.

I know 'tis nobler to take up arms against a sea of troubles and all that.

Now, regarding the use of computers: I ain't agin 'em. They can handily replace the movie projector, the overhead projector, the slide projector, and the pocket calculator, and they can supplement the trip to the school library. They cannot, however, replace the teacher, no matter how appealing that prospect may seem to the accountants.

One development seen recently in Korea were "robot teachers", cute little robots with built-in screen/display operated by human "teachers" who were in the Philippines via cable.

Why employ a teacher at expensive local rates and have to pay them enough to eat and give them somewhere to sleep when all you need to do is employ security officers at your school when kids are already conditioned to stare at TV/PCs for 8 hours a day.

It is an interest thought to consider how our brains are evolving around these unnatural objects and what happens when we are unplugged.